Unpretty
by Forever Written in the Stars
Summary: Because underneath it all, the glory, the flawless make-up, all the sparkle and shine, they're really just teenage girls.


**_Because underneath it all, the glory, the flawless make-up, all the sparkle and shine, they're really just teenage girls._**

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><p><strong>Payson Keeler is unpretty.<strong>

It's a fleeting thought, but a thought that flits through her mind on more than one occasion. She'll catch her reflection in the window as she looks over toward the parents' observation deck or she'll watch Kaylie Cruz apply blood-red lipstick and Lauren Tanner line her eyelids with heavy kohl before competition.

It doesn't matter why or how or what triggers it. The thought is still the same.

_Payson Keeler is not pretty._

She's not the _exotic Kaylie Cruz_ with glowing tanned skin, silky dark hair and even darker chocolate-hued eyes. She's not _queen-bee Lauren Tanner_, the perfect blonde with the perfect face.

She's _just_ Payson Keeler, dirty-blonde and decidedly plain-looking.

And that, she knows, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, shouldn't matter. She's _so much more_ than another teenage girl obsessing over her hair, her make-up, her weight.

She's an elite athlete. By the time she's eighteen, she'll have competed in the Olympics, and she doesn't allow herself to say it out loud, but she's going to win_ gold_.

So, really, the fact that she's not_ beautiful_ or _gorgeous_ or _hot_ or any of those other things girls desire to be shouldn't matter, because she'll be _so much more_ than the gorgeous girl with the perfect body, flawless make-up, and silky smooth hair.

But somehow, even though she knows all this, knows that she's _special_ and _extraordinary_ and_ flawless_ on the mat, she can't help but feel just a little bit crushed as she gazes at her reflection and sees her plain dirty-blonde hair (not a perfect golden blonde like Lauren's) and boring brown eyes (dirt brown, not glowing, chocolate brown like Kaylie's) looking back at her.

She knows that with respect to technique and ability, she's a far better gymnast than both Kaylie and Lauren, but somehow, in front of an audience, Kaylie and Lauren still manage to shine brighter. Oh yes, Payson will almost always score higher than the two of them, but the audience, the people in the stands, will go wild for Lauren and Kaylie, not Payson.

Kaylie dances around the floor in her perfect little pink leotards and Payson watches on the sideline as the crowd goes wild. Kaylie's effortless. She skates by on good looks and charm with a dash of talent just for good measure. She steals everyone's hearts with smiles and perfectly choreographed flourishes, and everyone forgets about Payson Keeler's technically flawless routines in favor of Kaylie's _pretty-girl sparkle_.

And then, there's Lauren. Payson knows she could trounce the blonde ice queen any day on any apparatus, except beam. There's a reason why everyone calls her the "bitch of the beam" (hint: it's not _just_ because she's a bitch). On beam, Lauren does things that no one should be able to do poised on a slab of wood four inches wide raised over a meter off the ground, and then there's that attitude, that attitude she brings to her beam that screams to the world, _"I'm better than you."_

Payson can't help but resent that Kaylie and Lauren have so damn much. They have _everything_, really: looks, talent, money, and Payson knows that if she loses gymnastics, she'll fade into nothing. It's happened before. She's lost everything she's worked for only to realize that beyond gymnastics, beyond flips, and flourishes, and stunts, she's nothing; she has nothing, but she thinks, that maybe, this, gymnastics, is all she'll ever need.

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><p><strong>Kaylie Cruz is unpretty.<strong>

_"You're gorgeous,"_ her mother tells her as a young Kaylie Cruz no older than five stands in front of a long floor-length mirror in a sparkling pink leotard and pink ribbons in her hair to match.

At five years old, she believes her mother, never doubts the words streaming out Ronnie Cruz's perfect mouth, because her mother is perfect and is therefore, the authority on perfection. Kaylie Cruz accepts her mother's words as truth.

But as it turns out, her mother is quite adept at spinning lies, and that _breaks_ Kaylie and her idyllic perception of her parents. She realizes that their _pretty, perfect life_ contained within the confines of a beautiful mansion set against a backdrop of the majestic Colorado mountains is _nothing but a lie_, one of those things that looks perfect but really_ isn't_, kind of like those retouched pictures of celebrities that make their way onto the pages of _glossy_ magazines.

All the _pretty words_ and _promises_ from her mother, _promises that she'll fix this_, don't mean a thing after the the pieces of her perfect life fall from the place among the _pretty_,_ shining_ stars to her feet.

Carter breaks her heart.

Lauren betrays her.

Payson, the strong one, shatters to pieces.

But she, Kaylie Cruz, wins on the national stage. She wins, and for a moment, she lets herself believe that everything's perfect, a moment of calm in a raging storm.

The calm doesn't last long before deluges of rain and strong gusts of wind fork across the pretty blue sky she allowed herself to believe in. The clouds roll in, dark and menacing, and lightning glows in the sky as the thunder rumbles loudly in the distance.

She's stuck. The illusion's broken. She can't delude herself into thinking it's all perfect.

It's horrible.

Carter's trying to win her back, playing the chords on her heartstrings like he's a musician, like he's Damon Young.

She and Lauren aren't speaking, and Lauren's like some pesky mosquito who won't go away no matter how hard you swat at it _(Truth be told, Kaylie's grateful for it, grateful that Lauren keeps trying, because eventually, she'll need Lauren and there's no one she'd rather have at her side)_.

Payson's stuck standing on the sidelines, watching them_ flip_ and _tumble_ and_ sparkle_ while she gets to look on with sad eyes and a broken heart.

Emily's trapped, once again, in her boy drama, in her life drama, and as everything around her spirals _out of control_, Kaylie can't keep track of it all.

She's not sure when, but she stops eating for a multitude of reasons she won't even admit to herself.

She's determined to keep pretending she's perfect, _the perfect, happy rich girl princess_ that everyone thinks she is, and it works. For awhile until she falls off the beam, _off the precipice_ and onto the soft mats below where she can't pretend she's perfect, where she can't fool anyone, and she finds that maybe falling, imperfection, isn't nearly as bad as it seems.

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><p><strong>Lauren Tanner is unpretty.<strong>

She stands in front of the mirror, and she expects to see _something_ in it, some sort of evidence of her transgressions, all the things she's done but shouldn't have - there are so many.

She doesn't find it. Not in the blonde sheen of her hair, her hazel eyes, the lines of worry etched into her brow. She expects to see something, perhaps stamped on her forehead, declaring to the world what a horrible person she is, some sort of poetic justice for all the people she's hurt.

Her feels that familiar clenching in her stomach, an urge that she refuses to give in to. It might cleanse her, purging it all, the _guilt_, the _self-hate_, from her system, but she refuses to go down that road. She _can't_ be another Kaylie.

She hates herself, wishes she could be _innately good_ like Kaylie, wishes her principles would fly straight like Payson, wishes she could let go of this urge to hurt and lie to the people that could maybe love her if she weren't such a bitch.

Sasha told her that she's a better person than her actions suggest, and his words from before she mounted the beam for the performance of her life keep resonating through her head and settling uneasily through her stomach. She doesn't know if she can do it, for him or for anyone else. She's not sure she knows how to be a good person anymore. She doesn't know how to let the truth shine through and simultaneously keep herself from _drowning_ in the mess of lies she's created.

She want to be good, because maybe then, she can _beautiful_.

And maybe, if she were beautiful, someone would choose _her_.

* * *

><p><strong>Kelly Parker is unpretty.<strong>

Or so her mom tells her, but she's Kelly Parker so she's never been one to take anyone's shit so most of the time she just holds her head high, Princess Leia buns and all, as her mother rants and raves about how she isn't good enough, how she isn't talented enough, how she isn't pretty enough, how she just isn't_ enough_.

She hears the whispers everywhere she goes. She overhears other gym moms talking about her mother, her manager, talking about how Sheila's a monster, how she exploits her daughter's career. She pretends she doesn't hear, keeps her head up, her gaze oozing condescension, because she and her mother, they're worth _so much more_ than these wannabes.

She pretends she doesn't notice the looks of pure, unadulterated hatred other girls, sometimes teammates, sometimes rivals, send her from across the mats. She just walks around the gym, sometimes at the Rock, sometimes at Denver Elite, like she owns the place, terrorizing the lesser gymnasts, kicking them off any apparatus she feels like using.

But then, there are those other days, and they _suck_.

They're the days when she wakes up and sees her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she applies her make-up and decides that her mother is right. She isn't pretty. She's not _gorgeous_ and _beautiful_ like those girls that are always hanging off Austin Tucker's well-muscled forearm. Hell, she's not even _Kaylie Cruz_ whose sweet flirty smiles and pretty dark hair charm audiences and boys alike. She's just Kelly Parker, and those images of her, those images plastered on billboards, on advertisements, on magazine covers that make girls want to be her, well, truthfully, all of that's_bullshit_. She'd give up her own life for someone else's in a heartbeat.

They're the days when she hears the whispers and can't ignore them. She watches the moms hug their young daughters after their first day of class and vaguely remembers when her mother used to do the same. She hears the whispers, and they slice through her heart, but she _can't_ argue, argue that despite appearances, her mother loves her. And then she wonders, when her mother stopped being _her mom_.

They're the days when she's at the Rock practicing, coaching Tessa who hangs on to her every word, when she wishes she could have a friend, because Kaylie Cruz said she couldn't have won Nationals without her friends so Kelly wonders if maybe she could be better. She also wonders, if maybe, having a friend would make life more bearable, and so she wishes that she could have what they do, what Kaylie, Payson, and Lauren have, because even though they sometimes hate each other - she's spent enough time at the Rock to know they sometimes do, they'll always _fight_ for each other. She wants that, because in truth, _no one's ever been willing to fight for her._

But she's _Kelly Parker_ so those days don't happen much and she just goes on with her life, ignoring the whispers, ignoring the words, and doing her thing.

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><p>EDITED: 614/2012


End file.
